Friday, July 1, 2016

Food Fight

Anytime you get a group of super powered individuals together there is bound to be conflict. This summer, the movie theaters were lousy with hero on hero violence. Punches were thrown, kicks were kicked and we all ducked and dodged our way around various batarangs and repulsor blasts.

But there was another fight that landed on the small screen. It starred DC's newest all star team and their unlikely allies. Four groups of competitors entered the battlefield of baked goods to team up with the DC Super Hero Girls and that can only mean one thing: WAR!

As you can guess from the title "Cupcake Wars: Kids vs. Adults," half the competitors are kids and half are adults. They are tasked with creating cupcakes that have the look and flavors that incorporate the themes and characters of the DC Super Hero Girls.

If you are not familiar with the team, they are an all-ages, all star lineup of some of the best DC Comics female heroes (and, for some reason, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy) that are meant to be inspiring and empowering to kids.

As these reality type competition shows tend to do, there is a panel of judges. Two of which are regulars but the other two have definite comic book credibility when it comes to this team of heroines:

Shea Fontana is the writer of the Super Hero Girls (which covers a ton of different different mediums from comics to animated shorts to an upcoming movie) and Ashley Eckstein is a prolific actress and voice performer who does the voice of Cheetah in the DC Super Hero Girls productions (she also voiced Dagger from Ultimate Spider-Man unlimited and Ahsoka in Star Wars Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels).

And then we have the host:

I believe his name is Screamy McScreamerton. Coincidentally, instead of talking he screams EVERY SINGLEWORD!!!

Clearly a protege of the Garrett Morris School of Inflection, Screamy instructs the competitors through three challenges: Taste, Taste & Presentation and Display Presentation. Unfortunately, unlike the fondant heavy Fantastic Four cakes we previously saw, cupcakes don't really lend themselves to sculpting specific, large scale images. So the bakers had to try to convey characters through an overall theme of the cupcakes. Let's see a few of the better ones:

We've got Poison Ivy on the left, Harley Quinn on the right and Batgirl behind them.

Here's a Katana cupcake...

...and a Wonder Woman...

And the winners had their cupcakes served at a DC Super Hero Girls themed party where the young attendees presumably became lifelong fans of both super heroes and free cupcakes.